Gemini captures ‘fireworks’ of star birth

Star creation is a messy but spectacular process as an image released by Hawaii’s Gemini Observatory shows.

The picture captures several gas jets — the “fireworks” of star birth — bursting at supersonic speeds from a stellar nursery 1,300 light years away.

These jets are shot out from stars as they form, and researchers using Gemini’s 8-meter telescope atop Mauna Kea say they found no less than six exiting this molecular cloud.

The region is rich in new stars and, while it has been extensively studied, the image provides some of the best detail of the universe’s creative forces at play, researchers say.

“The Gemini data are the best ever obtained from the ground of this remarkable jet complex and are showing us striking new detail,” said Colin Aspin of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy in a press release.

Carl Geballe, a Gemini astronomer, said that newly forming stars absorb gas at their center. But some of that gas, in a process not fully understood, gets propelled out from the poles, creating the jets, he said.

“I don’t think we’ve seen an example of so many jets in such a small region,” Geballe said.

“It’s a remarkable image.”

Some bursts might extend outward as far as a light-year and eventually form new stellar nurseries, he said.

One of the jets appeared to be wobbling, an effect that could have been created by two young stars orbiting closely in a binary system.

Also capturing researchers’ attention were runaway “orphan stars” that were ejected from the star cluster’s core.

Gemini said it found five faint protostars well outside the star-forming region and identified them as low-mass dwarfs. These runts might have been tossed outward by their larger brothers and sisters.

This chaotic process also encourages remaining stars to bind together gravitationally and form binary systems, Gemini said.

The stellar nursery is located in the direction of the constellation Orion.

Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.